A Different World: Part 1 - The Siege of Penthorpe Keep - 3. Chapter 3: The Elan Vital

Dionysia Martell could feel the eyes of the three sailors at her back; their gaze slid over her like something slippery and wet, like snails perhaps. She could hear their low, murmuring voices, their ill-concealed snickers. It didn’t matter that Dionysia was coltish in every possible: broad faced, broad shouldered, big shapeless bosom, bow-legged, or that she’d cut her hair so it only came down to her neck because the lice infestation aboard the ship was horrible. She was the only female aboard The Elan Vital, the only one with a “cunt” as they would’ve put it.

Dionysia pretended not to hear it; she’d been listening to it for the better part of a month, the eyes of one man or another turned on her, their ruddy faces alight with desperation and the contemplation of sin. At first it frightened her. What would stop them from ganging up on her, raping her? It wasn’t as if their father would be able to stop them, even if he was a priest. Travel by sea had made him sickly, not to mention the depression, and the constant drinking. Even now he was down in the cabin the captain had provided him, for three pence. There were two cots and a wooden chest.

Dionysia could no longer stand to be in the cabin with her father, could no longer stand the smell of his stink, his vomit, the shroud which had surrounded him the moment he burned down their cottage in the prairie. It was a black thing, this shroud, and it frightened Dionysia more than anything: more than the sailors with their wandering, lustful eyes, the constant threat of Paladin's plague, the threat of extinction. It didn’t help that Dionysia wasn’t dealing with her own grief over the loss of her sisters, her mother. The plague had taken them.

She remembered how Philip Martell had stood over them, laying quilts over their body, his eyes devoid of all emotion. His crucifix hung around his neck; he held his Bible in one hand and a torch in the other. Already their little cottage was filled with the stink of rot, of bile, of gas.

“May God hold you all in His arms,” he’d whispered. Then he’d turned to Dionysia and told her to wait outside with their mule, Peter, named after the apostle. She was reluctant to go - she wanted to watch them burn, wanted to watch the fire cleanse their flesh of the plague and set their souls free - but she never argued with her father. Despite her size and clumsiness, Dionysia had been the quietest of her five siblings, all girls, the one who was always watching and observing and learning.

She remembered standing in the snow with her father, and their mule, the few precious items they were taking with them in a saddlebag, watching the flames billowing through the stained-glass windows of Dionysia’s home, a home Phillip had built with his own hands. In the moment Dionysia could not cry - she’d already cried all the tears it was possible to cry.

Now the wind blew at her, blowing her pale blonde hair back from her forehead. Despite the quilt she had wrapped around her shoulders, she shivered. She could no longer feel her cheeks; the tears oozing from the corners of her eyes had turned them sticky.

“You shouldn’t be standing out here,” a voice said. “It’s cold.”

Dionysia turned to face Pip, the youngest person on the boat besides her. She was seventeen and he was two years older than her. His hair was long, the color of dirty straw, his face scarred from gouterose. He was not a handsome fellow but Dionysia enjoyed his company, though she would never admit it out loud.

“I couldn’t stay in the cabinet,” she said, giving him a shy smile. “Not another second longer.”

He nodded sympathetically. “I understand. I imagine you’re pr’tty uncomfortable.”

She shrugged. “It could be worse, I suppose. Do you ever get used to it?”

“After a whil’.”

The first several times they spoke, Dionysia had the hardest time understanding Pip: His accent was so strong and he had a habit of not pronouncing certain letters. After a couple of weeks she’d managed to pick up on how he talked.

“How is your father?” Pip asked.

“Same as usual. Drunk and lying in a puddle of his own bile I expect.”

“He’s a priest, ‘n’t he?”

“I don’t know what he is anymore,” she said, looking at the choppy tide of the Mediterranean Sea. Or who he is, she added silently, unable to give voice to the rest of the thought. I don’t think he does either.

Pip stood next to her, gripping the side of The Elan Vital. Dionysia was now quite used to the constant rocking of the ship, the way the floor was tilting from one side to the next beneath her feet, a sort of seesawing motion. Up close she could see the beads of sweat that wetted his forehead. How could he be sweating in this weather? There were dark circles under his eyes. A sense of dread curled its way around her heart, squeezing like a tapeworm. Her mother, Diane, had been the first to get sick; then her sister Marie, then Kirsten, then Daphne, then Annika, then Milla. And it started out with the sweats - that was the first symptoms of Paladin's Scourge. Then the skin would begin to darken until it became black, the hair would begin to fall out, they’d begin to cough up the black goo...The black goo was how it spread. If it so much as got on your flesh then you were damned…

Or it could just be a regular fever, she told herself. I could catch it too if I keep standing out here like the silly goose I am.

“I better check on my father,” she said, not just to get out of the cold, but to get away from Pip. The idea of catching it, after watching it take away everything she knew and loved until there was just herself and her father, terrified her - and she was ashamed for feeling this way. Pip was the sweetest boy...so very sweet.

“Good night,” he shouted, voice rising above the squawk of the seagulls swooping above their heads.

She turned, walking across the deck, pulling up the gown of her faded blue chemise just as her mother Sasha had taught her. She was halfway across the deck when she almost ran into Ambrose, The Elan Vital’s second-in-command. He was tall and whip-thin, his long hair greasy.

“Hey, girly, where ya goin’?” he asked.

His breath hit her, smelling of old meat. Her stomach rolled, her throat worked. She was grateful she hadn’t eaten in the past day.

“I’m just going to check on my father,” Dionysia. She doesn’t like the drunken look in Ambrose’s eyes, the way it roams over her body, pausing at her bosom. “Excuse me,” she said.

Before she could brush past him, Ambrose grabbed her wrist and wrenched her back. “C’mere, pretty thing,” he said, his stink hitting her with the force of a mallet. “Let’s have some fun, aye? What d’ya say?” His hands reached under her gown, cold knobby fingers pulling at her knickers.

“Get off me!” she half-screamed half-gasped, turning her head away from the assault of his breath. She planted her hands against his bony chest and shoved with all her might. Ambrose fell back, his backside hitting the deck of the ship. He looked up at her with shocked eyes, eyes that were quickly engulfed with fury.

“You bitch!” he shouted. “You’ll be sorry!”

Four sailors, who were wrestling a net full of fish over the edge turned to look at the source of commotion.

Dionysia looked at them looking at her. Good, she thought. Let them see what will happen to them should any of them try to touch me. With that she gave Ambrose three kicks to the crotch, something which would surely have her sisters and mother gasping in shock in heaven.

Ambrose opened his mouth to scream but only a choked gasp came out. His eyes bulged out of his head and his face was a dark shade of scarlet. Not wanting to stick around for when he got on his feet, Dionysia broke into a jog, ducking through the entrance that would take her below deck. She slid into the cabin her father had rented and closed the door behind her.

Except for the candles sitting on the flat wooden chest in the corner of the room, the cabin was completely dark. She could barely make out the form of her father curled up in his cot, legs drawn towards his chest. He was such a small man...shorter than her mother had been, wispy. She remembered how small he’d looked standing in front of their burning cottage, the leviathanian flames reaching towards the sky. But not once had he flinched or turned away. He seemed so courageous…

And yet, now, curled up in his cot, Phillip seemed so small, a feeble man who’d lost everything.

Dionysia’s heart ached for him, ached for his affection. You haven’t lost everything, she thought. You still have me, your last remaining daughter. Do I not count for anything? Or will I always be your least favorite daughter, the least prettiest of the six? She’d never been the apple in Phillip’s eye, or her mother’s for that matter. She hadn’t been as graceful, didn’t know how to sing, or dance or do any of the things women were supposed to do. When she prayed to the Lord she always peeked one eye open to see who else was praying. She was the one who always asked questions, who felt a smidgen, just a smidgen (was it really only a smidgen or was it more) the existence of God.

But she’d loved them all: her sisters, her mother. She’d loved them more then any of them could possibly know...but they were all dead. Paladin’s plague had claimed their lives.

All she had left was her father...and she loved him now more than ever.

Suddenly she felt tired...so tired. I’ll go over to my cot and sleep until dinner time.

Already her confrontation with Ambrose was slipping from the front of her mind to the back. As long as she was in the cabin with her father she was safe, safe and soft...No one would dare touch a man of the Cloth. She went over to her father’s sleeping form. The smell of whiskey and stink coming from him made her stomach turn but she refused to let them deter her.

“I love you, Papa,” she whispered. She stooped, kissed his sweaty temple, where his greying hair seemed to grow thinner with every passing day. Then she climbed into the cot and brought her knees up to her chest just as her father was doing. She closed her eyes and dreamed of her sisters.

                    …

She sat under the trunk of her favorite tree, sitting atop a quilt; the quilt was soft, stiched together impeccably by her mother’s small dexterous hands. She holds a tattered copy of Beowoulf, the epic poem. She was beginning to get enraptured in the poem when she could hear the sound of her sisters’ passage through the pasture.

Dionysia, no matter how hard she tried not to, looked up. She wanted not to feel the love that often came with the jealousy. But she always looked and when she did she always felt a swelling of love for them - they were, after all, her blood. So as she watched them dart towards the cottage, dresses clinging their wet skin, dark hair cascading down their shoulders, she felt that confusing mixture of love and resentment.

Dionysia could see her mother standing in the doorway, watching them sternly. Chickens staggered drunkenly across the grassland, their hips swinging from side to side. Though she had her hands on her hips and her brow was creased together, Dionysia knew her mother wasn’t really upset with her five beautiful daughters - how could you be upset with Maria, Kirsten, Daphne, Annika, and Milla when they were just so perfect? Now Dionysia on the other hand...her story was of a different matter entirely.

“I told you girls to stay out of the river!” Diane shouted at them, her cheeks flushed. “You never listen, you filthy girls!” But even as she scolded them didn’t Dionysia detect just the faintest trace of laughter?

“Sorry, Mama,” Maria said, wringing water out of her hair. “We were just having a little fun while the water’s still warm. Winter’s coming.”

“You should of joined us, Dionysia,” Annika said. “ T’was a lot of fun.”

“Dionysia swim?” Daphne laughed, pointing her narrow nose up at the sky. “She’d probably just sink like a stone. Besides she is far too busy reading her books to hang out with her sisters.”

Dionysia’s insides twisted with a sudden jagged-edged fury. Her hands, gripping the corners of the book, curled into fist. Not for the first time she fantasized about pummeling her sister’s pretty face with her fists, wiping that crooked smug grin off her face, sin or no sin.

Then a strong gust of wind blew and that was when things began to change.

They were too busy laughing, her five beautiful sisters and even her beautiful mother, to notice the dark blemishes beginning to spread across their skin, starting from the tips of their fingers and spreading quickly up their arms.

Dionysia stood up; the book tumbled out of her lap, into the grass. I did this, she thought. I did this with my anger, with my sinful anger. Which, in reality, would have been a ridiculous line of logic. She did not possess the magic to make such things happen. She was human, not fae. But this was a nightmare and such logic does not exist in nightmares.

Their hair began to fall out in clumps. Black ooze dribbled down their chins, down the front of their handmade dresses, from the corner of their eyes. And all Dionysia can do is sit there and watch.

                    …

Something was wrong; before she even opened her eyes, Dionysia could sense it.

She rolled over. Her father was up, not lying in his cot. His shoulders were slouched; silence and shadow hung around him like a deadly shroud. She watched as he lifted his arms and put on his crucifix. Somewhere above her footsteps moved rapidly across The Elan Vital’s deck, anxious footsteps. The ship groaned wearily as it rocked back and forth furiously. Was that the crack of thunder she heard? God help us, are we in the middle of a storm?

“Papa?” she hissed. “Papa, what’s wrong?”

Her father looked at her; the shadows had filled his eyes and the sharp edges of his cheek bones, giving him a skeletal look far more frightening than any nightmare she’d ever or could ever have. His lips were a grim, hard line. In that moment Dionysia yearned to see him smile again.

“It’s Pip,” he said. He turned away from her as if those two words were explanation enough. Then he ducked out of the cabin, his footfalls fading into silence.

Pip? What could possibly be wrong with Pip? Then she remembered how feverish he looked. God no, she prayed silently, wrestling to get out of the cot. She half-stumbled-half-tumbled to the floor. She pulled her quilt, which was really too cold for this weather, around her shoulders and stumbled towards the door. Oh God please no.

Her mind, still delirious with sleep and half-remembered nightmares, raced. She clambered up the steps and exited the cabin. As soon as she stepped into the night, she was assaulted by the furious force of the storm. Rain water plummeted from the sky, battering at every inch of her body: her hair, her shoulders, her shoulder blades. It was so cold it stole her breath away; she’d gone from one nightmare straight into another. Part of her yearned to race back into the cabin, for even though it was cold it was at least, for the most part, dry; but another part had to follow Phillip, make sure he was safe, and furthermore to see what was going on with Pip.

The twenty-two sailors that lived and worked on The Elan Vital were huddled at the front of the ship.

“The priest is here!” someone announced.

“Make way, make way!” the captain of the ship, Atticus boomed; other than Pip, he’d been the only one to treat Dionysia with kindness - it made her wonder how he could work and live in the company of such deviants. “Let the man of the Cloth through, damn you all!”

The crowd parted enough to let Phillip through and then closed before Dionysia could chance a glance at what had become of Pip. Looking around, Dionysia grabbed a part of the mast and hoisted herself carefully up onto a crate which was strapped down by coils of rope. She could just barely see over Atticus’ massive head. He was standing in between Pip who was tied to the wooden stern pulpit. His eyes were swollen shut; blood dripped from a gash in his forehead. He was hunched over, as if the very act of standing was torture. But worst yet was the black goo dripping from his mouth: a death-omen.

“What have you done with this boy?” Phillip shouted, his voice barely audible over the hair-raising claps of thunder.

Ambrose said something but Dionysia couldn’t tell what it was: the scarf he wore around his mouth muffled his voice. She watched her father pull up his own scarf. He said something in response, his own voice unintelligible. Then Ambrose waved his arms in agitated motions. Whatever conflict was going on between the two of them it wasn’t going well. Her father rose to his full height, barely coming past Ambrose’s chest. Then Atticus stepped in between them and pushed both of them back. Dionysia cursed, conflicted, wishing she could hear what was going on, what was being said, and glad she couldn’t at the same time.

Her father turned to Atticus. Another gesture. A moment later Phillip was putting on a pair of thick leather gloves. He knelt before Pip and reached out to touch him. Pip’s body jerked, trying to get away from his touch; thick black tears seeped from his bruised eyelids. Her father said something and Pip’s head made a jerky up-and-down motion; he was nodding at something Dionysia’s father had said.

Her father began to pray, his mouth moving silently to say the words. Dionysia knew the words well. She didn’t realize tears were streaming from her eyes, mixing in with the tears of the sky, until she began to say the words along with him. She wish she had her own crucifix with her but it was back in the cabin and there wasn’t time to grab it.

Together, her father and she said the prayer:

“O Loving Father and Savior, send your angels to carry the soul of your servant from this earth to the heavenly place of eternal and everlasting life. Let family and friends who have passed before in faith be reunited in joy with the departed. Forgive any wrongs that have been committed and welcome this beloved spirit into the warm embrace of your unending peace. Amen.”

Then just when things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse they did.

Atticus unsheathed his sword and in one fluid motion cut the ropes holding Pip to the stern. Even from where she stood Dionysia could hear the thud of Pip’s body hitting the deck floor. Then, as one, on Atticus’ orders, the crew lifted Pip into the air.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” her father cried. His thinning hair was matted to his skull and his clothes clung to his flesh.

“I’m sorry, this is the last thing I want to do,” said Atticus, “but we can’t have him on the ship. He’ll kill all of us.”

“No Captain!” Pip bawled helplessly, kicking and thrashing to no avail. “Please don’t, please don’t throw me overboard!”

This can’t be happening, Dionysia thought. It just can’t. Dear God won’t You intervene for once, just this once.

Before she knew what she was doing she was running forward. She didn’t know what she intended to do she just knew she had to do something. How could they just condemn Pip in such a heartless, inhumane way? Pip who had been so kind to her, from the very moment her father and she boarded The Elan Vital. “No!” she screamed. “You can’t!”

Ambrose came out of nowhere and backhanded her hard enough to knock her back into a nearby crate. “Stay out of it, girly!” he shouted.

She could only stare, stunned, helpless, blood running from her nose. Pip continued to scream and kick, sounding like a sheep who knows it’s getting ready to be taken to be slaughtered. Then, as one, the crew threw Pip overboard.

“No!” she screamed, clambering to her feet. She leaned over the railing. There Pip was, a small shape thrashing and bobbing over the surface. His head kept disappearing; she remembered him sheepishly telling her over dinner one evening that he couldn’t swim. “Pip!” she screamed, throat raw. She reached for him as if through some divine miracle she could pull him out of the water. She wished through will alone she could make it so.

Phillip appeared at her side. He gently laid his hands on her shoulders and led her away from the railing. “C’mon, child,” he said gently. “There’s nothing we can do for him. We can only hope he’s with God.”

What if there is no God? she thought. What if there is no Heaven or Hell, no Satan? Where would he go then?